On their website, Coffee Meets Bagel say that they’re “fun to interview… or at least we have fun being interviewed.” They were right. The interview was a lot of fun, and very inspiring to learn about a unique, creative brand. We spoke to Dawoon Kang, who founded the app with her two sisters Arum and Soo, to find out what makes Coffee Meets Bagel unique, how they feel about being known as the anti-Tinder and what it’s really like to work with your sisters.
“We only give you one match a day, and it?s based on a lot of different factors and not just who?s around you. We take into consideration your background, your age, your job, where you went to school, your education.”
Taylor Magazine: What inspired you to create this and where did the idea come from?
Coffee Meets Bagel: I started this company about three years ago with my two sisters. We started in New York City and one of the reasons we wanted to start a dating company was that despite it being a very crowded place, we were very surprised by the lack of dating services that we thought understood the way women wanted to date. Most online dating services are all about bombarding users with countless profiles, as many as possible and I think it’s very easy to fall into this trap of making superficial decisions. By giving each person ten seconds to judge them, you just end up making decisions based on looks and we wanted to change that by bringing more thoughtfulness and quality back into dating. What?s great about that is it really appeals a lot to women because generally speaking that?s what women usually look for in a dating service; quality, safety and much more relationship focus versus a casual hook-up. We wanted to create a service that a lot of women can feel excited about using and that was the birth of Coffee Meets Bagel.
Taylor Magazine: Had you or your sisters used dating apps and had any bad experiences?
Coffee Meets Bagel: The reason we knew there was an extreme lack of dating services is because we were users. I don?t like to mention specific names but I was a user of OkCupid, I signed up to Match.com but I didn?t subscribe because it was just too expensive. The typical experience as a woman when you get on these services is you are bombarded with messages from guys and they are not very pleasant or nice messages. They usually expect you to reply like a Babestation girl and be frisky straight away when not every girl is like that. There are some, but it?s mostly just overshadowed by the spamming of “Hi baby”, messages which feel very creepy. Unless you’re willing to put up with that it?s very difficult to use them.
Taylor Magazine: That?s very interesting. You?ve been called previously the ?anti-Tinder?, so how do you feel about that label?
Coffee Meets Bagel: I actually think it?s a very accurate description. I think Tinder is the epitome of bombarding users with profiles and making people resort to superficial decisions based on looks. We are basically the opposite of Tinder. We only give you one match a day, and it?s based on a lot of different factors and not just who?s around you. We take into consideration your background, your age, your job, where you went to school, your education, your friend network. All of these things go into consideration when we pick somebody for you and you have 24 hours to make a decision. Even if you make a 10 second decision, you?re not gonna get another person and that really makes our users think more carefully about each of the ?bagels? that they get every day at noon.
Taylor Magazine: Okay, users get one match a day. So, if I’ve just downloaded the app, run me through the process. How does it work?
Coffee Meets Bagel: When you first sign up, you have to sign up through Facebook. We never post anything on Facebook but we do like to collect data from it so you don?t have to go through a zillion profile questions and we still know some information about you. We generate a match based on what we know about you which in the beginning is very little and then when you like or pass a person, we start asking you other questions. We ask you to fill out a simple profile description about yourself and then from that, we refine your match every day. As you make likes or pass decisions on the bagel that you receive everyday, we also ask you, “Why are you passing on this person?” So we start collecting more and more information about you and the matches will improve as we get to know you better.
Taylor Magazine: At the moment how many relationships statistics do you have?
Coffee Meets Bagel: Those are very hard to track but the number that we have right now is over 25,000! The matches are in the millions but the people who have come to us and told us that they’re in a relationship are around that number. Now we have about 500 couples who tell us that they?re in a match through Coffee Meets Bagel every week so the number is accelerating. If you want to take a look at our couples, we post a lot of them on our Instagram.
Taylor Magazine: When you guys first started and you initially came up with this concept, how difficult did you find it to introduce yourself to potential users? Obviously you?re different to a lot of dating apps so were there any struggles?
Coffee Meets Bagel: Because there?s so many dating apps even if you say you’re different it’s hard to be taken seriously. In the beginning, we told around a couple hundred of our friends because they know us and they know what sort of thing we’d deliver.
Taylor Magazine: What are some of the best achievements with the app? What?s something that you?re really proud of?
Coffee Meets Bagel: The way we define success is when our users find someone special through Coffee Meets Bagel. I remember the first time somebody told us about their engagement. When there?s a connection we notify you through email and she found the email that we sent her when she was first connected with her now husband. It was like, “Wow look what we created!” I actually found my boyfriend through Coffee Meets Bagel.
Taylor Magazine: Do you find it easy working with your sisters? Have there been any struggles?
Coffee Meets Bagel: We struggled a lot because when we?d get into a meeting room, we?d fight over some other really trivial stuff. But it?s been almost three years since we started working together and now, we know exactly what pushes the other person?s buttons. We learn to be more constructive with our feedback. We actually got a coach to teach us how to work better together and how to be more sensitive.
When it comes to choosing your co-founder, it has to be somebody you respect and trust a lot because you?re going to go through loads of ups and downs. There are gonna be times where you wanna question their decision and if you don?t trust them, you?re gonna get into a real major fight. A lot of start-ups fail, never really because of competitors but because 1) founders can’t get along and they just decide they can’t work together anymore and it?s not fun or 2) they give up because it?s too much to be able to work together. I feel very lucky I don?t have this issue and I think one of the reasons why we?re able to come this far is because we have each other.
Taylor Magazine: As three women in business, have you felt challenges when breaking into the dating app scene? It’s previously been seen as more male dominated.
Coffee Meets Bagel: It is very very male dominated. I think we?re probably the first female founders of a dating app that has become mainstream. It was very hard and I think one of the challenges that female entrepreneurs face is that a lot of it is heavily dominated by guys. It really is about chemistry and it really is about how they feel about you. We?re only humans and I?m guilty of this too. I?m not saying only guys are guilty of this, it?s everyone. We just relate more to people who look like us, who think like us and who talk like us, and when you walk into that room and you look completely different and you think differently it?s hard. It is really about chemistry when it comes to getting your funding as a start-up and I really think in order to get more female funded start-ups to be successful we really need gender equality or more representation at least in the funding community.
Taylor Magazine: What advice would you give to women who want to get into business? What do you wish someone told you when you started Coffee Meets Bagel?
Coffee Meets Bagel: This applies to everyone but I think it?s particularly useful for women… take it as a norm that you?re gonna get a lot of rejection and there are gonna be people that will say your idea is terrible. There?s gonna be people who will say “no” to you when you ask for funding but take that as a given, don?t take that personally. It’s just the reality of this field. When you actually find the investor that believes in you and believes in the way you look at the industry, it?s just going to feel like a discussion. Fundraising is really about finding the right person, it?s like dating actually. It will take longer than you think, it will be harder than you think but don?t get discouraged.
Taylor Magazine: Good advice! You launched in London this year, what was it about our city that seemed like the ideal next step for you guys?
Coffee Meets Bagel: London is probably one of the most important international cities for us. We have London, Hong Kong, Sydney and other cities that we launched this summer. London is a very key market for us because one of the key requirements for us to exist is a large concentration, a big density of singles. More than 60% of adult residents in London are singles, which is a huge number. There are more than 2 million singles in London, which is why it’s such an important market.
Taylor Magazine: Have you found that people have different attitudes to dating in different cities or depending on where they live?
Coffee Meets Bagel: They do. There are a lot of similarities and a lot of differences. We asked the question, “Do you consider dating in whatever city easy?” and the choices were: easy, average, hard or really hard. It was interesting because men in Hong Kong said it?s the easiest to date. London came fourth in that list but for women, Sydney was the easiest to date and London came second for women. From that, we saw that women in London consider dating easier than guys. In Hong Kong it?s the complete reverse. When we asked what people are looking for in online dating, globally 70% of people said relationships. That was the thing that people were most looking for.
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